Madison has been rated the best college football city in America. USA Today conducted the poll that determined the Badgers home-town was the greatest in the land for the sport, hiring a number of sports writers from across the country to create a list of fifteen finalists that would be voted upon by users of the news source’s website. The Wisconsin capital received 50,000 unique votes during the poll, beating out Blacksburg, Virginia, Columbus, Ohio, and Athens, Georgia, who managed second, third, and fourth, respectively.

The city’s success in the rating was a grass-roots effort according to Judy Frankel, the public relations and communications manager for the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau. Frankel told reporters that the group did all it could to get out the vote for Wisconsin fans. She said that she was confident in the efforts when USA Today called her to inform her that the city was leading the pack from the start. Various articles regarding the outcome of the poll credited Madison’s game day atmosphere as one of its most enticing features, one writer going so far as to say that it felt like a family reunion every Saturday.